Kyrie was worried and she didn't like to be worried. Or rather, she tried to minimize the time she spent being worried, tried to minimize the time she devoted to feeling stress. She much preferred, by far, to work on solutions than to turn over in her mind things that couldn't be helped.
But she was sure that it had been Dire who'd killed that poor woman. She remembered her own words to him—in haste and rage, and mostly wanting to get rid of him—about the reporter and the paper. Oh, she should have known better than to say that sort of thing to a psychopath, but she didn't feel guilty. Not exactly.
She had simply not been brought up with the idea that whatever she might say to someone might cause that person to go off and take it into his head to kill someone else. Though she'd grown up in foster homes, and some of her foster siblings had been less than stable, she'd never met with that level of volatility. Now she had. And she'd take it under advisement in the future. It had perhaps been stupid of her to speak of the poor girl. But Kyrie hadn't intended her death, and nothing could be served by castigating herself over crimes she hadn't meant to commit.
And yet, she felt a nettle of guilt and a nettle of worry, as she went about, waiting on tables. She would swear she smelled at least two shifters, perhaps more, though it was hard to tell through the smell of bacon and eggs and fresh-grilled pancakes.
However, when she stopped by the Poet—who had come in unusually late, and was clearly staying for breakfast—she could smell him—she was sure of it—the sharp tang of shifter around him.
She stopped long enough to refill his cup, and she could feel the smell rising from him, and then she noticed something else. What he had written on his notebook, in tiny, obsessively-neat block print, was "A modest proposal for a rodent revolution."
Rodents, Kyrie thought, moving away as he looked at her, and before he could realize she'd read over his shoulder. A Rodent Liberation Front. She wondered how real that was. It had seemed to—pardoning the pun—ferret out that school teacher rodent. Perhaps it had spies?
She shivered at the idea of an army of rodents spying on people. It reminded her of the movie Ratatouille, which she'd thought Tom would like, because, even though it was an animation for children, it was about a rat learning to be a chef. And since Tom had started culinary classes and was invested, heart and soul, in cooking the best he could for The George, Kyrie had thought this would be the perfect movie. Only the scene of the rats, flowing like a furry tide to take over the restaurant and do everything in it at night, had made Tom jump up and say, "Turn it off." Kyrie herself had felt pretty uncomfortable, too, though perhaps not as much as Tom, who'd said that all he could think was of a similar tide of rats taking over The George. The juxtaposition in his mind of rats and cooking surfaces just seemed to drive him crazy.
And yet . . . wouldn't such a furry tide of rats—such a group of shifters—have power? Shouldn't she be able to get help from them? She knew Tom didn't want to ask for help from the Great Sky Dragon. She understood it, even. But this was a diner customer.
The thought lasted all the walk back behind the counter, to replace the spent carafe and take up the filled one. Tom was behind the counter also taking over from Anthony and listening to Anthony's instructions on what was cooking and at what stage.
"I'll be back by six, right?" Anthony said. "Is that early enough for you? Because, you know, these double shifts are killing me, though Cecily says we could use the money because she wants a large screen TV. Where she plans to put the large screen TV in our apartment, I don't know, though doubtless I'll find out."
"You'll find out she wants to move to a bigger one," Tom said, in an amused tone, and Kyrie was surprised and admiring at once, that he could keep this calm and joke with Anthony like that, with everything that was hanging over their heads.
Anthony shrugged. "Ain't that the truth. But she's worth it. She's a great cook. Her steak is almost as good as yours. And I'm sorry, Tom, you're a good-looking man, but Cecily is much prettier."
Tom chuckled at that, and Anthony, putting his jacket on, ducked out of the counter and off towards the hallway. And Kyrie turned to Tom and said, "What about the RLF?"
Tom blinked at her. "Beg your pardon?"
"What about the Rodent Liberation Front?" Kyrie said. "What if we asked their help?"
"You're joking, right?"
"Well, they are a group of shifters, and they seem to be . . ." She looked up to see Tom's lips tremble. "Well, all right, the idea of an army of rats is somewhat creepy."
"Creepy isn't the half of it, and what I fear is not an army of rats," Tom said, "it is an army of rats, mice, gerbils, squirrels and guinea pigs."
"But . . . surely they could . . . do things?"
"Like what, nibble people to death?" Tom asked. Then shrugging, "Oh, I grant you they could probably be very useful in spying and that sort of thing, but . . ." He shook his head. "I don't know, Kyrie. All these organizations seem to come with their own, for lack of a better word, agenda: their own assumptions about who's in and who's out. I'd prefer to just be human."
Kyrie had to giggle at that. "Ah. Well. So would I, but we're not."
Tom shook his head. He frowned. "No. But perhaps we must be? I mean, I'm not going to deny, I can't deny, that I'm also something else, but we live in a society of humans and our parents . . . well . . . at least mine," he had the grace to blush, as if just remembering that she had no clue who or what her parents were, "are human. We owe humanity something . . . Even if we owe our kind something too." He looked annoyed, as though he'd just noticed that his tongue had got him hopelessly tangled. "Look, if I saw someone go after a . . . a mouse shifter, simply for being a mouse shifter and because the difference scared them, of course I would defend him or her. We owe each other that. But . . ."
"But if you found a mouse shifter nibbling on human babies at night and counting it as not mattering because he thought himself superior and more human than them . . . You'd eat the bastard?" Kyrie asked.
Tom flashed a smile. "Kill. Despite my dad's imagination, I do try very hard not to be a cannibal."
Kyrie chuckled. She could no more imagine Tom being a cannibal than she could imagine him being a mass murderer. Shifter or not, she knew her boyfriend held himself to a very stern standard. And would not, could not deviate. Not and remain himself. Which meant he couldn't ask for help. And that she would have to be the guarantor to the Great Sky Dragon that Tom wouldn't kill himself. She thought she could do that, if she had asked for help—and not him. If it were her debt.
A couple came in, and Kyrie went to seat them at a table by the window and take their order. The problem, when it came right down to it, was that Kyrie was also not absolutely sure that Tom could kill Dire even presuming he found a way to defeat his mind powers, no matter how much he thought Dire was dangerous to humans. She knew Tom. She thought Tom's own scruples would stop him. He would only kill when cornered. He would kill to protect his friends. But, given Dire's abilities, when Tom found himself cornered it might be too late.
Dire might not kill Tom. Kyrie wasn't sure how the truce of the Ancient Ones with the dragons would hold given an attack on a dragon. But she knew that he would hurt Tom. And wreak havoc on the rest of them.
And she saw no way out of it, she thought, as she set the two orders for French toast on the counter. They had to get rid of Dire, but Tom wouldn't let her ask for the help of anyone who might defeat the creature.